Blimped up Could 'the flying bum' signal return of airships?

It's a dreary day in Bedford, but on a flight simulator the skies above San Francisco airport are blue and the wind is low. That is a good thing, because there is an amateur at the joystick of the world's biggest aircraft.

- Jasper Jolly

The flight simulator models trips by the Airlander 10, which is part airship, part aeroplane. If all goes to plan for its designer, Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV), two dozen will be built each year from 2030 in Doncaster, South Yorkshire.

The virtual 98-metre aircraft noses its way into the air gently, responding to adjustments about 300 metres over the city. This reporter is an old hand when it comes to crashing flight simulators, but the journey passes without incident, albeit with considerable help from one of the five people who has actually flown in the real thing. Those flights astonished crowds when the prototype lifted off in Bedfordshire in 2016. The prototype was retired in 2019, after gathering enough data on flying and - once, not fatally - crashing.

HAV is now preparing to run the "scale up" gauntlet: building a factory employing 1,200 people, and then making airships capable of transporting 10 tonnes of cargo, or up to 130 passengers, at speeds up to 130km/h.